The invention is based on a device for cyclic feeding of a specific number of spherical bodies into a container. With a known device of this type, in one position of a slide, one or a plurality of spheres slide from a supply conduit into a measuring chamber in the slide and, in another position of the slide, the plurality of spheres fall through the guide conduit into the container aligned for this purpose. A sensor of a monitoring device assigned to the supply conduit records the passage of one or a plurality of spheres in each cycle. With this device it occurs repeatedly that spheres that have been registered by the monitoring device do not enter the container, either because they remain in the guide conduit during a stroke and fall out later or fall into the next container during the next cycle, or because irregularities in the spheres cause the guide conduit to become plugged.
The presence of a sphere or a specific number of glass or steel spheres in a pharmaceutical syringe is, however, essential for the distribution of settled active ingredients by shaking before use. It is thus desirable to have a feeding device on a filling machine with which it is assured that the necessary number of spheres is deposited into a container in each operating cycle.